FILM REVIEW; In a World of Singers, an Unsung Hero

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: August 13, 2004

The real history of pop music over the last half-century is as much a story of technological innovation as it is a star-driven genealogy that connects the usual legends in an elaborate family tree of styles and influences. To hear the producer and recording engineer Tom Dowd describe his pioneering role in the evolution of studio recording, from monaural to stereo to multitracking to digital, is to begin to understand the degree to which machines, as much as performers, have shaped the changing sound of pop.

Machines, of course, are useless without human engineers to operate them. And Mr. Dowd, who is profiled in Mark Moormann's admiring documentary ''Tom Dowd & the Language of Music,'' comes across as a musically sophisticated sound technician whose respect for musicians always took precedence over his fascination with gadgetry. Interweaving archival snippets of performances and interviews with musicians and record executives, most notably Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, the film includes many fascinating anecdotes about the creation of some of the most famous modern rock and soul recordings.

Mr. Dowd, who died in 2002, began his career in the music business when he recorded Eileen Barton's perky No. 1 hit, ''If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked a Cake'' for National Records in 1949. In the 1950's, he became a house engineer and producer for Atlantic and engineered recordings by jazz greats, including John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and Eric Dolphy, as well as rhythm-and-blues classics by Ruth Brown, Ray Charles and the Drifters, and pop hits by Bobby Darin and Sonny and Cher.

In the mid-1960's, with Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin, Mr. Dowd was one-third of the creative triumvirate that conceived, arranged and recorded Aretha Franklin's pop-gospel hits, including ''Respect,'' which Mr. Dowd had previously recorded with Otis Redding. He traveled to England, where he recorded Cream, and Eric Clapton recalls how a suggestion from Mr. Dowd led to the skidding guitar line that defined ''Sunshine of Your Love.''

He went on to produce the seminal albums by the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, which defined Southern rock as a genre. His goal, he says, was always to record the most balanced, close-to-live concert sound possible by precisely mixing all the ingredients with a special attention to the bass line.

Thirty years after Derek and the Dominos' classic album ''Layla'' was recorded, Mr. Dowd sits at a mixing board and plays back individual instrumental tracks of the title song to show how the parts, including the dual guitar lines of Mr. Clapton and Duane Allman, were integrated into a cohesive whole. One musician after another attests to the sophistication of Mr. Dowd's ear and his easy rapport with musicians.

The man who emerges is a likable, unpretentious musical enthusiast and roll-up-your-sleeves problem-solver who apparently led a charmed life. The son of a concertmaster and an opera singer, he was born and brought up in Manhattan and studied math and science at Stuyvesant High School. At Columbia University he did classified research on the development of the atomic bomb. But after World War II, he was so frustrated because the secret nature of his research disqualified him from receiving college credit for it that he switched careers.

In one of the film's last moments, he sits at a piano and picks out a version of an Irving Berlin song, ''I Love a Piano.'' Reciting the lyric, he displays a gusto and a love of music that suggest a young man who has just discovered the key to happiness and is not about to lose it.

''Tom Dowd & the Language of Music'' opens today in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Washington and Nashville, and on Monday in Detroit.

TOM DOWD & THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC

Directed by Mark Moormann; director of photography, Patrick Longman; edited by Tino Wohlwend and Mr. Moormann; produced by Mr. Moorman, Scott L. Gordon and Mark Hunt; released by Palm Pictures. Running time: 82 minutes. This film is not rated.